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Drakona alphabet
The Drakona alphabet or Drakona script (Eda.: ɒɿɔɞɷʅ̆ɔ ɾɷɜȷɤ; Dzakoena togin; , Drak.: ɒʊ̆ɞɷɤɔ ɾ̆ɜȷɤ; Drakona thogin; ) is the alphabet used to represent the three Old World Drakona languages -- Drakona, Edazoran Drakona, Lyoonos -- and single New World language -- Eloonis. Used by over 50 million dragons as of 2015, the Drakona alphabet is one of the most used scripts in the Old World, topped only by the Latin script of the Kryfona and Arieles languages. It is the official script of the Adborthos Republic and the United Provinces of Edazora, and is recognized by the unincorporated regions of the Luenas and Lyoonos. The modern variant of the alphabet consists of 19 letters in Drakona, Eloonis, and Lyoonos, and 17 in Edazoran Drakona. Letters The Drakona alphabet originated in the Dal-Tetas about 2,500 years ago. Originally, it consisted of just 13 letters. Early Drakona alphabet During the early era, there is evidence to suggest that there may have been capitalized variants of each letter; however, within five hundred years of its conception, any capitalized variants had been dropped. By around a thousand years ago, the 17 letter alphabet utilized by the Edazorans had developed, and just over sixty years after, the letters Ra and Ne were added to the alphabet as well, marking the transition from Early Drakona to Modern Drakona. Modern Drakona alphabet Note: '''Bold letters' are vowels. Blue letters (letters Ra and Ne) are not used as individual letters in Edazoran Drakona.'' Diacritics In addition to the seventeen or nineteen letters, the Drakona alphabet is also supplemented by two diacritics, the saalboka (˘'''), and the zayalgat (˚'), which were introduced to the alphabet around the time that Ra and Ne were added to the Drakona alphabet. The former is used in a similar fashion to shorthand: when a series of letters occurs that is the same as the name of a letter, the saalboka is placed above it. Thus, ''Adborthos is rendered ɔɒʋ̆ɾ̆ɛ, instead of ɔɒʋɷʊɾʌɷɛ. The latter is used to indicate a held vowel, and in Edazoran and Standard Drakona is relatively uncommon outside of the digraph aa. The zayalgat is significantly more frequent in Eloonis and Lyoonos, where it is most common in the digraphs aa, oo, and yy. The two diacritics arose during a time when ink was a scarce commodity in the remnants of the Dal-Tetas, and at first were used to indicate abbreviations in manuscripts and certain formal texts. However, within fifty years of their introduction to the alphabet, they had been casually assimilated into informal and traditional writing, and since then they have remained in use along side the nineteen letters. They spread to Edazoran Drakona in 1194, and into what became Eloonis and Lyoonos by the end of the 1400s. Letterforms and typography The letterforms and general typography of the Drakona alphabet has remained largely unchanged over its history. In the early days of the alphabet, largely due to the limitations of writing technology at the time (and due to the fact that it was often engraved), the letters were significantly more angular, often times forming shapes similar to runes. With the advent of paper like substances and better writing utensils, the shapes gradually became more and more round, eventually taking on their current letterforms around the year 1100. Intriguingly, despite developing wholly independently of it, several Drakona letterforms -- specifically those of Al ⟨ɔ⟩, Dal ⟨ɒ⟩, Bor ⟨ʋ⟩, Tho ⟨ɾ⟩, Yo ⟨ɩ⟩, and Io ⟨ȷ⟩ -- resemble Latin letters. In modern day, the Drakona alphabet is a single-case alphabet, lacking capitals of any kind. Although there is evidence to suggest that there were originally capitals in the alphabet, if they ever did exist, within five hundred years of the alphabet's inception they had been dropped. In its place, Drakona developed several varieties of type, which are analogous to roman, italic, and oblique type. Traditionally, the italic type (known to dragons as sonease-solon hoph; "sideways-slant type") has been the dominant type in writing. Since the late 1800s, however, both roman type (ep-sondone hoph; "up-standing type") and oblique type (sone-sondone hoph; "side-standing type") have risen tremendously in popularity, particularly with their adoption as a standard for newspapers in the Adborthos Republic. History The Drakona alphabet is known to have been around since at least the times of the early Dal-Tetas state, some 2,500 years ago. Originally, the alphabet seemed to consist of just 13 letters, however by about 2,000 years ago it appears that the full 19 letter alphabet was in use in all parts of the Dal-TetasExcept for in the dialect (and later language) of what are now known as the Edazoyasi, which dropped the letters Ra and Ne.. Rise in popularity When it was first developed, the Drakona alphabet was mostly used by nobles and the rich, and relatively few outside of those classes could read or write it. However, within the course of about a hundred years of its development, the alphabet exploded in popularity, and became the ''way to represent the Drakona language in writing. However, it was only officially declared the alphabet of the Dal-Tetas about 2,000 years ago -- five hundred years after its original development. After this declaration however, the alphabet was officially used by all facets of Drakona society and would continue to be used for a thousand years afterwards. Decline After several years of Kryfona aggression, in 1076 the Dal-Tetas began to wage a war against the Kryfona tribes. This did not go as expected for the Dal-Tetas, as the Kryfona -- for lack of better wording -- curb stomped them, eventually forcing the dissolution of the Dal-Tetas in 1099. When this happened, Drakona society as a whole practically fell apart. The Drakona alphabet quickly fell into disuse in most of the fragments of the Dal-Tetas that survived the war. Only the Edazoyasi continued to use it in any capacity. This also eventually changed, as in 1131 they were discovered to be a whole separate species of dragon from the Adborthosi, and immediately set up shop elsewhere. After this happened, Adborthosi ceased using the alphabet entirely, and would not use it again until 1581. The decline eventually peaked in the 1100s and early 1200s, when the Edazoyasi contemplated abolishing it in favor of their own script -- something that never came to fruition. They continued to use the alphabet (albeit not Ra and Ne), and when the Edazora Republic was founded in 1228, it became the official alphabet there. Resurgence With the founding of the Edazora Republic, the number of users of the alphabet exploded, much like it had when the alphabet had first been developed. By 1300, the alphabet was capable of being used by close to three million, and could be read by another two million. These numbers continued to grow as decades and soon centuries passed, and by 1581 both numbers had doubled. In 1581, with the founding of the First Adborthos Republic, the Adborthosi began to use the alphabet officially for the first time since the end of the Dal-Tetas War. Within a few decades of its introduction in the Adborthos, the alphabet was understood by close to 95% of the population.This was not known to be fact until an old copy of the ''Adalane Segela, c. 1605, was discovered in the Library of the Adborthosi in 1983. Up until that point, the number was estimated to be around 55%. This extremely high literacy rate has been attributed to the relatively easy letterforms of the alphabet, and the simple phonetic values that come with them. Modern Times After the successes in the First Adborthos Republic, the Drakona alphabet was adopted by several other dragon minorities. In the late 1700s, the writing system was adopted by the Lyoonos for use in the Lyoonos language.This was in part because Lyoonos had no formal writing system, and in part because Lyoonos bore large amounts of similarity to the already existing Drakona languages. Lyoonos has since traditionally been written in the Drakona alphabet, although Latin is the official script of choice for the language. The successes in Lyoonos also lead to the neighboring Eloonis to take up the alphabet in 1856, and they have also traditionally used it alongside Latin as well. The alphabet is now used by over 30 million on a daily basis, and by another 15 million on a semi-daily basis. References Category:Alphabets